How To Make Cold Brew Coffee: 8 Easy Steps

We all love coffee and let’s face it, it’s difficult to get through the day without our caffeine fix. Does that mean we’re just a little bit addicted? Maybe, but we don’t mind admitting that.

The problem is, in the heat of the summer, sometimes it can be too warm for a hot coffee, and all you want is a cold beverage. The perfect answer is an iced coffee, right? Except have you ever tried to make one?

You brew a strong, hot coffee, pour it over the ice – and then the ice melts and the drink you end up with is watery and tasteless. We’ve all been there. But what you really need is cold-brewed coffee.

Cold-brew is a completely different drink. It’s rich, it’s smooth – and since it’s brewed cold, it doesn’t melt the ice when you serve it.

One of the best things about cold brew is, it’s so easy to make. Here’s our recipe for how to make cold brew coffee:

What you need

If you want to be fancy, have lots of money to spend and want to turn coffee-making into art, you can splash the cash and buy a drip tower to make your cold-brew coffee. Check out this video to see how it works.

However, the good news is, if you don’t want to spend upwards of $200 on a new toy, you can easily make cold-brew at home with stuff you already have. Here’s what you’ll need:

Coffee beans

Clearly, to make coffee you’re going to need…coffee! But the best way to start is with beans, not pre-ground coffee powder.

Beans keep their freshness longer, but also – and more importantly for cold-brew – if you have beans and not ground coffee, you can control the coarseness of the grind.

This is something you will be able to experiment with as you gain experience making cold-brew but to begin with, try using a ratio of around 1:8 ground coffee to water.

Coffee : Water

8

1

Next, pour in the cold water. Depending on where you live and the water you have there, you may wish to filter your water first.

Remember, coffee has two ingredients: coffee and water. Many people focus all their attention on the coffee – the beans, the grind, the storage and so on – but the drink you end up with is only as good as the water you use.

Finally, stir the mixture gently to make sure none of the coffee is stuck together in clumps.

Close the lid and leave the coffee in a cool place out of direct sunlight to brew.

Step 4: Leave the coffee to brew

For this step, you don’t need to do anything but it’s still one of the most important parts of the process.

The key consideration here is how long you leave the coffee to brew before it’s ready to drink.

This is something you can play with later. The length of time depends on the strength of drink you want to make and also the grind of your coffee, but remember, if you leave it to steep too long, the resulting drink will be bitter because the unwanted flavors will have been allowed to escape.

Pro tip:

Making cold-brew coffee in this way can take anything from 12 hours to up to 48 hours. To begin with, we recommend starting at about 24 hours.

Step 5: Strain with the sieve

When you have let the coffee brew for the allotted amount of time, you need to strain the coffee.

In order to do this, you should pour the coffee liquid through the muslin, cheesecloth or cotton flour sackcloth, whichever you are using.

Pour through the cloth from the brewing container into the storage container and then back again.

Repeat this several times until no residue remains in the liquid and you are left with pure, smooth cold-brewed coffee.

Step 7: Serve your cold brew coffee

Now, after all the careful preparation, your drink is ready to serve. As we mentioned before, one of the big advantages of cold-brew over hot-brewed iced coffee is that it doesn’t instantly become watery when the ice cubes melt.